


Shattered & Hollow

by whosCas (EyeofOrion)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: End!verse, Endverse, M/M, The End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2066532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyeofOrion/pseuds/whosCas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the end, and Dean Winchester and Castiel are among the few still alive in a world that ended a long time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There was something celestial about them; as if they were giants or great cosmic bodies periodically colliding and exploding into showers of gold and green, rather than two broken men crawling in the dust of a world that ended a long time ago. And, to the others, there was nothing to object to about it: when there was nothing left of the world they once lived in, there was no need to pretend that they were still the people they used to be – or even that they still fit the definition of “people” that they used to believe.

Nobody questioned it. They were great, or would have been if there were any great people left. But there was no room for greatness when the sparse survivors were, one by one, completing their journeys back to ashes, back to dust.

And perhaps it was this that made them so unusual in the eyes of the others. Even now, months after the last great mass slaughter, the others had the distinct impression that they still felt for each other. To still feel, to still care about another person in that way, was unheard of: it just didn’t pay to care when the only certainty was imminent and gruesome death. It was survival.

And yet, they cared.

Yes, they hated each other sometimes. Nobody could call it romance, or even a relationship, the violent tempest that linked the two of them together. Nobody could call what they did “making love”, though everyone knew about the sex. The L word hovered over many tongues, but was never spoken. They knew better than to use the L word at all these days, but to use it in regards to them would seem too… simple. Laughably insufficient.

They existed simultaneously as individuals and as a unit, linked together by a connection that surpassed anything any of the others had ever felt. Each of them was marked indelibly with the other’s blood. And here, at the end of days, they were still irrevocably connected.

And yet, they weren’t.

This connection was not a story of soulmates and destinies. They were connected, but unfixably disconnected. Both of them had had to come to the painful conclusion that they meant everything to each other – neither had a damn thing left but the other – and it still wasn’t enough. They had both lost everything that made them who they were and they were running untethered, directionless. The connection alone was not enough – would never be enough – to fix them. The sex was meaningless, empty: it was too little, too late. If they had tried, five years earlier – if one of them had had the guts to forget the shit they were dealing with and press their lips together – it might have worked. Now, it was two broken stones continually striking together, throwing out sparks but never managing to conjure a fire.

The others all knew, even if they could never understand. But they never spoke about it.

What was there to say?


	2. Chapter 2

Cas’s room had ornaments.

It was stupid. It was so damn stupid. It had made Dean so angry – why do you have so much _stuff_ , Cas? So much _useless crap_? Now, he didn’t even bother getting angry. If Cas wanted fancy lamps and Buddha statues and that damn _huge_ bed, fine. It didn’t make a difference to anything.

It impressed the girls. Well, some of them. Some of the others had held onto their love of beautiful things pretty well, at least for a while – some of them still bothered styling their hair – so when they saw Cas’s harem they were naturally enamoured with it. It was, after all, an oasis of beautiful things in a world where pretty much everything had been turned to crap. Maybe that was why Cas liked it. And, hell, he looked like a king. In comparison to everyone else’s grubby bunks, Cas’s hut was _glorious_.

But it, too, was meaningless.

Apart from the girls – and occasionally guys – who attended Cas’s orgies, not many people really bothered with beauty anymore. Beauty wouldn’t save them from the virus, or a bullet. It was extraneous. So, they were wrong, Cas’s lovers, when they thought he looked like a king. The value of items was different now. When Chuck preached about the value of toilet paper – made of gold, he said – he wasn’t wrong. Cas’s decorative collection of tchotchkes and rugs was worth less than a good gun, or food for a day. Dean was right; it was useless crap.

Cas was a beautiful, beautiful wreck.

The one of Cas’s possessions that Dean had shown an interest in – briefly, a long time ago now – was his record player. Nobody had a clue where he’d got it, or how he’d transported it, but it was a permanent fixture in one of the back rooms of Cas’s hut (safe from damage it might sustain from flailing limbs during the notorious orgies he held in the bedroom). He had a small but specific collection of records, music he had chosen for his own reasons; records he was drawn to, like memories from a different life. These included the debut album of Led Zeppelin (which Dean picked up and looked at for a long while, once, and then replaced without a word) and, for some reason, “Blue Hawaii” by Elvis Presley.

They missed music, the others. There was no radio – other than the scrappy emergency communication – and, of course, all or most of their favourite musicians and radio hosts had died horribly a long while back. Nobody was entirely sure how long what electricity they had was going to last, so using it to listen to music, rather than for lighting, cooking, or heating was generally considered a bad idea and would be stopped after about ten minutes if it ever happened. Music was now only in the form of birdsong, or humming, if anyone could muster the spirit to hum. The tank they had hijacked a while back had a music player, and the philosophy seemed to be that you can’t worry too much about wasting energy when you’re driving a damn tank.

The virus affected only humans, at first. But after several months there were reports of animals, too: first pigs, then other mammals like cats, rats, and dogs. The rats and dogs were the worst. Dean’s first sighting of a Croat dog was a few miles out of the camp, and if he hadn’t been in a tank at the time he would have feared for his life. A ragged, feral, mangy creature, its fur hanging limp and matted in clumps, strings of bloody saliva trailing from its quivering muzzle, it advanced on them with eyes far too aware, far too menacing, to be an ordinary dog. They mowed it down, but it stirred something in the group. Then came the rats; they were almost impossible to keep out of the camp, and more than a couple of people were infected while they slept. Chuck, of all people, conjured up an incredibly toxic powder that killed them off, and everyone soon got used to adding it to the salt lines that barred every entrance to their rooms.

But the birds remained.

Cas watched them sometimes. To anyone who had seen him, they would barely have recognised him as the angel he had once been. Once, he had watched the birds with an outsider’s gaze, but with love; with a fascination that was almost as beautiful as the angel himself. Now, he watched them with blurred eyes, through a mist of drug-induced fog, but still clearly. He never could obscure the world as much as he wished to. And an observer may have seen, just for a moment, a twinge of jealousy that passed over his eyes. He hid it well – it is easy to hide from people who cannot bear to see things the way they are – but he never forgot his wings. The dull, unrelenting ache of his mortal bones that still held but could not bear the legacy of holiness; the agony of the deep gashes in his back where his wings, calcified and crumbling, had left him; and, worst of all, the emptiness where his grace had once been: all were reminders. The drugs, the sex, and the belongings – all that gold, the meaningless material things – were human things. These were the things humans liked, the things they used to distract themselves from their own mortality. In his need to mask the pain and fill the emptiness, Cas clung to them.

They didn’t work.

He laughed at himself mirthlessly. With his gouged spine and clown’s artificial smile, he was not beautiful. He was grotesque. Perhaps that was why Dean didn’t look at him the same way anymore. Or maybe that was because Dean had given up all remnants of himself when his brother had said yes to the Devil. Without Sam’s resolve; without the connection between the two of them, Dean was lost. _And as it breaks, so too shall he break._


	3. Chapter 3

He’d left the Impala the day he returned to Camp Chitaqua after Sam said yes.

He had work to do, and the constant reminder of his little brother’s aching absence – and its reason – would not be a help. If he was going to get through this, he would have to harden his heart.

That was when Cas started on his pills. That, really, was when they fell into the state they were in now; with Sam lost, there was no team. So there was no need to pretend for each other. Just like that, they let themselves fall apart. As the Impala rusted, Dean wore away all the things he had once taken comfort in, roughly carving a new, unfeeling version of himself. A good soldier and nothing else. And, while he did his best to eradicate his humanity, Cas embraced his new, shoddy humanity for all he was worth.

It was several weeks before Dean relented, went back out to where the Impala lay, and prised off the license plate. He brought it back to the shared cabin and propped it against the wall at one end of the desk. They never mentioned it, but he caught Cas looking at it with a strange whisper of a smile on his face. Faith.

 

Cas knew how this would end. Dean, without his brother to be his moral compass, was an unstoppable force, and he would, one day, take on the immovable object. And Cas would follow him. It needed no explanation.

Dean knew it too, of course. He would lead his friends to their deaths, and then die himself at his brother’s feet. Just as he had seen it happen five years ago. Five years ago, still warm and wholly human, he had dared to believe that it could happen differently – that something, _anything_ , could change the outcome. Not anymore.

What had shaken him, though, was Cas’s devotion. Dean was used to losing the ones he needed; either they would die, bloody and broken and _his fault_ , or they would leave, and he couldn’t fault them in doing so. But Cas had stayed. Cas, who had only known him for a tiny fraction of his celestial life, had done what nobody else had, and made an unspoken promise to stand with him, come what may. Even if what came was the very end.

So he was a monster, for leading Cas to it. Of course he was. This was the ultimate betrayal of the ultimate trust, and he didn’t even consider going back on it. Because, the thing was, he was almost certain that Cas already knew. A horrible, painful part of him wondered if that was the reason Cas hadn’t given up the ghost already. God knew Cas had enough pills stashed in his hut to kill several healthy men, and he tossed them back like Skittles, but he was careful to never OD. Part of keeping his promise, perhaps.

 

Cas had ODed, once. It didn’t look as if he did it on purpose, and afterwards he insisted he’d just made a mistake. It had scared the life out of Dean, finding him splayed on his huge bed, face pale and clammy, surrounded by spilled capsules – the guilty party that never left the crime scene.

Dean had yelled himself hoarse, and eventually carried Cas to the medical cabin slung across his shoulder. He’d been lucky not to choke on his own vomit, they said. And lucky Dean had found him before it was too late.

It was a blur, and yet he had experienced each moment with agonising clarity. He was even on the verge of _prayer_ as the medics buzzed around Cas, coaxing him into breathing again, and he despised himself. It was so goddamn selfish. He wanted Cas to live, to drag himself and his heavy wings – yes, Dean saw the weight on his shoulders, even if he averted his eyes swiftly enough to convince himself he didn’t – through more days of terror and pain so that he, Dean, could lead him to destruction. Because he didn’t want to face it alone. Because, for all his stoic heartless bravery, he _couldn’t_ face it alone.

It was because Cas was all he had left, he supposed. That was why his heart leapt into his throat and lodged itself there when the misted blue eyes swam open, and quivered when Cas’s strange unreal smile returned slowly to his bloodless lips. Why, when the medics left, he allowed Cas’s outstretched arm to guide him close to his friend’s side.

And the words Cas had whispered to him, completely clear despite his hazy state, his voice like the sweetest water to a man in the desert; the words that hung in Dean’s mind, that returned to him in the middle of the night… they were the drugs talking. He’d been hallucinating, probably. Something like that.

After all, you didn’t use the L word anymore. Nobody did.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from “[Shattered & Hollow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAHdPzR2uIs)” - First Aid Kit


End file.
